Hello folks, and happy new year! It's been another long while again, so I decided I should put together a post before I pack up for Japan and leave my 2013 journals back home in England. The post will be picture heavy as always, but if you're prepared, then jump right in!

I forgot to take a cover shot of this journal, but it begins in early September. A busy time, because I change schools and have to learn a whole new set of ropes... Photobucket saw fit to juggle the orders around a little bit, I'm sorry!

Schedule. Trying to get through all my intros in a month.

...this is my first school where I've been receiving notes from my co-workers in Japanese D8

...this is clearly out of order, going by the date. But speaking of Japanese. This was my scoresheet for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), Level 4. I took level 3 in December, and am hoping to take level 2 in July. Crossing my fingers!

December overview.

Studying. I'm always very meticulous in the beginning.

Someone posted pictures of my parents on facebook. They were taken a few months after their wedding.

Lesson plans!

We survived sports day!

October calendar and schedule. The next ones are rather out of order, bear with me!

Picture from sports day, doing the dance with the third grade kids (and a teacher dressed as a power ranger). I had no idea what I was doing.

My principal at the new school is very snap happy. I came in one day to find these photos on my desk!

So I changed schools in September, but one of the schools I rotated to was actually my first year elementary school. The kids who are now sixth graders and due to graduate were new fifth graders when I left. When tidying the room, I found one of the "self intro" cards I had the kids make in our first class together. Unfortunately this kid (he and his twin brother were my favourites ;A;) transferred to another school. Still nearby, but I pulled a few "awww..." faces when I found this.

English day at another high school at the end of October. We were asked to make reward cards, but I didn't give out all of mine. I had to keep one back for myself, I think they were pretty awesome.

Class confusion, and a photo from International Day at my previous school with some of my favourite kids.

November classes/calendar.

December schedule.

More studying.

...and then there was nothing particularly noteable, so we jump to December and a new diary:

...some of my stars moved.

We had a big conference, where all the ALTs in the prefecture, as well as one Japanese English Teacher from each high school got together to exchange information. A good 20-odd pages at the start of my journal are notes from that conference.

Attempting Afrikaans - the idea was to throw unfamiliar languages at us and illustrate what English class is like to our kids, who are still learning.

Notes from a skype session with my parents. We were discussing cat names.

Jump to my birthday. I was sure I took an inside-photo of the green card, but Photobucket didn't upload it. It was from my hairdresser, along with a little bunch of flowers!

More cards

I flew home on the morning of the 17th, and the woman who checked me in was like, "...it was your birthday yesterday, wasn't it? We made you a card."

...I also took a picture of the front of this card but... photobucket. It's of Santa flying over Tokyo Sky Tree. The boat on the river below is also full of Santas. Doi-sensei is one of my co-workers... we've been through a lot together the past few months!!!

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Comments

What a fun journal! I love that you put so much in, even a band-aid! (My first journal I ever kept had decorative band-aids all over the cover. It was appropriate because I had been spending a lot of time in the hospital at the time) I think it's great that you can write in neat lines when there are no lines on the page, whenever I try to do that my lines end up all over the place...